Last week I had the distinguished honor to be interviewed by the always inspiring Rosetta Thurman – a prominent voice around the issue of Gen Y leadership. Rosetta picked out four “Now Generation” Gen Y leaders who she felt were going to be making waves this year.

During my interview, I talk about my background in science/engineering/public health as well as my passion around Public Health 2.0 – which looks at social technologies and cross disciplinary collaboration. I get a chance to talk about how I got interested in the social media landscape and highlight a few organizations that I think are doing it well (AIDS.gov, CDC, Playnormous and HopeLab).

Stay tuned for the next three leaders as they are similarly profiled throughout the month!

If you get a chance to listen, I would love to hear your thoughts on how I did.

Photo Credit: Timmy Faust

Well, here we are with another decade under our belts – out with the old and in with the new as they say. But before I talk about 2010, I have to say that 2009 was an extremely fantastic year for me. Being kicked off with my first Mobile Tech 4 Social Change meeting in NYC and meeting Katrin Verclas of MobileActive as well as tons of other great minds, a spark was ignited within my entire being to live and be someone of impact. Since that day in February, I embarked on a journey of speaking opportunities, conferences and brainstorming of ideas with fantastic people who are passionate about making use of innovative tools and technologies to impact the health and wellness of the masses.

It was certainly the year you could say I “woke up” to things I want to do and accomplish. Not a bad way to end the first decade of the millennium huh? Now we all get to take inventory of what we have already done and how we want to see ourselves grow in this new year. With the help of some great people that I regularly keep up with (since they’re pretty smart and have some great things to say), such as Chris Brogan, Beth Kanter and Frank Barry – I’ve decided to think broadly about the words that I feel will be guiding my growth in the new year. I encourage you to do the same.

My words for 2010: Educate, Collaborate, and Ignite

Educate

During some self reflection I was doing towards the end of last year about my personality and things I enjoy doing – one of the things I settled upon was the joy I get from informing someone of something new. But education is not just about handing someone a piece of paper and saying “here, hope you can figure out something to do with it”. Last year I got to make this happen by speaking on mHealth at the North Carolina Division of Public Health and presenting on new media for public health at the North Carolina Society of Public Health Education Annual Meeting. I truly hope I continue to do that in 2010 – some great opportunities coming up so stay tuned. It’s about placing information into their hands and minds in the context of being relevant, otherwise it becomes a piece of trivia that may or may not be useful during game night.

Collaborate

This is where I get a real rush of excitement, mainly because for those of you who have met me or hung around me a while, you understand I really enjoy people. That is pretty much at the core of anything I do or will do on a large or small scale. Interacting with people enriches my life and makes life more enjoyable. So in 2010, I really plan on collaborating with like minded individuals to move things forward. Organizations such as Amy Jussel’s Shaping Youth and Playnormous have huge appeal for me! The way I see it, each of us has something to contribute that the other person can’t. That’s one of the main reasons why I try to surround myself with all sorts of people – smarter, more creative and funnier.

Ignite

Remember when I said that the meeting in NYC last year ignited a spark within me? Yeah, I want to help create that feeling for as many people as I can this year. Last year I got to help out with a new program mentoring students at Purdue University on social media. I also was able to go back to my alma mater (University of Maryland) and speak to the new class of public health students about the coming opportunities they will have to innovative and change the field. How cool is that? The world becomes more alive and full of opportunities when you feel purposeful, doesn’t it? No matter what path you take in life or whatever field you choose to grow your expertise – when you care about it, that’s when success arrives.

I would love to hear your own three words or your own thoughts about what you aim to focus on in 2010. I might even challenge you to create your own post about them and send em over to me or here in the comments section. Would absolutely love to hear them!

Photo by: Saxonfenken

So I’m really excited to announce that I was selected to be part of a new social media mentoring program at Purdue University (@mindofandre is my Twitter tag)! Thanks to the wonderful Dr. Mihaela Vorvoreanu, a professor focusing on new communication technologies, I will be partnering up with one of her graduate students to guide them along understanding the social media landscape. I have the honor of connecting with Jennifer Smock (@smocktweets on Twitter), a graduate student earning her Masters in Public Health (MPH). Jennifer’s interests focus on the use of new media to improve the field of public health, with her current research highlighting how the public feels about season flu and H1N1 vaccinations.

Especially within the context of social media, I want to emphasize the term partnership. Although it’s considered a mentoring program, I strongly feel that all of us are learning together regarding this new landscape. I am hardly a guru (or expert, specialist, or any other title that I feel misleads) but I do really enjoy learning everyday and am passionate about finding out how best to apply these new ideas to public health. I’ve been involved in one way or another with social networks and new media for a couple years now so I have an increased understanding and appreciation for what these tools can do.

So please feel free to check out Jenny’s blog, leave comments there and stay tuned for guest posts from her on what she is learning.

As I tell my young nieces and nephews – education is one of those things that no one can take away from you. It’s the universal key to success in life.

Hey folks, it’s no secret that after I was inundated with extensive creativity and innovation at the last San Francisco based Health 2.0 conference, I was bright eyed about games for health. Well, over the past few months I have become an avid fan of one of the companies that demo’d their products – Playnormous. After the conference I had to look them up and was happy to see that their target audience were young kids – helping them to learn healthy habits and ideals in a society where the opposite bombard them constantly through television, the Web and yes even through video games.

I’m always interested to see what new technologies and tools of interactive engagement are being used to further health initiatives and right now the healthy gaming industry is molten lava hot. I don’t have to tell you how well the Nintendo Wii is doing with making huge strides in changing the way people think about exercise. But who’s to say that I don’t want to continue telling you how well things are going?

Which leads me to the reason I wrote this for all of you.

A new blog has been unveiled to the public from the great people behind Playnormous, to bring you fresh, current and interesting points of view on the growing applications of the healthy gaming movement. The blog, healthGAMERS, is focused on taking a look at some of the innovations around game-based technology to improve public health. One of the coolest parts of the blog launch is that Playnormous got in touch with me and asked me to be a co-author! Of course I was thrilled and couldn’t turn it down.

So check out healthGAMERS for those of you interested in how the video/computer/interactive game world is makin waves to improve our health and the health of our kids. For some added coolness, check out a clip of Playnormous being featured on the local ABC news recently. If you are interested in writing for healthGAMERS, please feel free to contact me!

Finally, here is a video of the Playnormous presentation from the Health 2.0 conference breakout session last year. I took this on a Flip camera so it isn’t best quality (will have to turn up the volume) but it’s pretty cool.

Speaking of new changes in 2009…

I have begun working in the Health Communications division over at RTI International. I am super excited because it gives me an opportunity to get back to my passion about enhancing the health and well being of people everywhere. I’m hoping to do some great work and continue learning about the important connections between real world needs and the advancement of communication technology practices.

I believe as we move forward in 2009, the public health world will continue to benefit from people taking advantage of innovative technologies, including new media tools that have proven time and time again to be beneficial.

Much like many others on the Web who are into learning about how social media impacts communities, I’m an avid reader of the material Chris Brogan puts out. A few days ago, I caught up with a post of his where he did a video blog post highlighting a few books that he finished reading which all had a theme about making positive impact.

Lately, I have been getting back into reading some of the books I have on my own bookshelf, such as Influencer, Citizen Marketers and Making Health Communication Programs Work (otherwise affectionately known as the Pink Book). You could say that I am on a knowledge quest. And despite the tons of information that can be found online, books will never get old with me. Books on social entrepreneurship and changing the world for the better are always on my radar, which is why I was happy to see Chris pointing out a few I hadn’t heard of yet. Check it out and the book links below:

Books featured in Video:

Leaving Microsoft to Change the World by John Wood

The Generous Man by Tor Norretranders

Now that we are fully in swing of holiday season, personally my favorite time of year, we are afforded the opportunity to reflect on the year and gather around our loved ones. After enjoying a great Thanksgiving, I began to think to myself, what am I thankful for being given?

A year ago around this time, I was in a place of intense reflection. I was becoming passionate all over again about the public health field (in which I got my undergraduate degree) and loving the social media world. I was frustrated that I had a limited outlet for my thoughts and ideas and wanted more out of life. Since then, there have been a couple things that have happened to me that I am truly thankful for and I wanted to share them with you:

Getting Used to Blogging: I started blogging in October last year (it was called Antibio.tech then) and it didn’t take me long to get into the groove and start discovering how great it was. I was definitely hooked and I began to carve out what I wanted the blog to become.

Discovery of Twitter: When I first got introduced to Twitter, I didn’t really have an idea of how to use it but I wanted to start communicating with others using new media. After about a month and taking part in web strategist Jeremiah Owyang’s Twitter post in December, I started following several people. A few months later, I began getting connected with health focused individuals as well as friends in the DC area who were interested in social media. The rest, as they say, is history. I can honestly say that Twitter has changed the way I think, interact online and has given me quite a few professional opportunities. Without all the great people that I have met on Twitter, I wouldn’t be at this point!

Support from Wife: After being married for about a year and a half, I have to give special thanks to my wife for putting up with all those late nights of blogging and Twittering – getting used to the overload and figuring out a system wasn’t easy! Now I get a lot of great encouragement and support that keeps me motivated to this day. She even was kind enough to do a guest post – gotta love it

Clarity on Life’s Work: I’m one of those people who constantly evaluate their progress in life – success in achieving goals and creating new ones. This year was definitely a journey in figuring out what makes me happy and what I want to focus on. I call it my “life’s work”. Over my life I plan to make a difference in various ways but mainly focusing on health, education and philanthropy.

What are you thankful for?

I have finally been able to sit down and think about my exciting and deeply informative adventure out to San Francisco to attend the Health 2.0 conference. Some of the next few posts will highlight certain things that I got excited about and that I think really need to be brought to light regarding innovations in healthcare. I want to start off with showing this interview I had at the conference from the health video site, icYou. Great people over there and they were awesome during the session.

During the video, I talk about what Health 2.0 means to me and why I think it’s important to the well being of the masses.

Since I started blogging back in October of 2007, I have always been working toward providing relevant information to those that may come by and read. I started out with a pretty general focus, covering anything related to both health and technology, also trying to combine the two topics. I came up with some pretty good material, including a great two part interview with Troy Turner who works with high tech prosthetics for the military. I was pretty proud of that one and Troy has also invited me down to where he works so that I can get an even more in-depth look at the facilities and what he does. I am definitely going to take him up on that offer.

So this month would make it just about 11 months since I first began thinking and writing about how the health world would be transformed by technology and Web 2.0 advances. Once again, I’m pretty proud of myself for leaving the safe world of information consumption and turning to a more active role of information production. I’ve been told several times that I’m good at conducting research to find information that I need/want – it basically is just me understanding that pretty much whatever you need to learn, the information is out there, especially now that we have such a content heavy version of the Internet. The bottomline is that I love to learn new things, I’m an information nut! And what that means for Pulse and Signal is that I want to share anything I know about the Web, technology, and health to those who are interested.

With that in mind, I wanted to write about the direction that I am planning to take the blog. After spending time in the public health and health education fields while getting my undergraduate degree, I learned alot about trends and influences determining our collective health. Then as I began to expose myself to everything about social media and Web technology, I thought about how it could be used to influence the health world. Social media really brought back out my passion for improving lives through health education and communication and I saw an opportunity to rekindle the fire I had during college. And now I’ve realized

how I’m going to make those improvements – through empowering those who are already in the health field and have an interest in using these technologies to better educate and communicate with their audiences.

How is blogging helpful for health educators/communicators? (reaching a wider audience)

Are we done with PowerPoint slideshows that are overpacked with information? (You betcha)

Are we ready to embrace a new world of communicating and disseminating information? (I hope so, because it’s here and not going anywhere)

I hope you will continue to join me for some great content and engaging discussion. I will be learning along with you and hoping to make a difference by navigating through these changing and exciting times.

]]> http://pulseandsignal.com/about-andre/signaling-a-new-direction/feed/ 6 http://pulseandsignal.com/about-andre/marketing-for-good-on-jonnys-partay-tomorrow-night/ http://pulseandsignal.com/about-andre/marketing-for-good-on-jonnys-partay-tomorrow-night/#comments Tue, 15 Jul 2008 15:31:42 +0000 Andre http://pulseandsignal.com/?p=200

Hi folks! Well I am really excited because I will be on Jonny’s Partay tomorrow evening. The Partay is a popular Web show where individuals are highlighted for what they are doing in the realm of social media and I am honored to have been picked to be on the show with 2 other awesome friends of mine.

The focus of the show will be on using communication and marketing tactics to bring about positive social change. Of course I will be speaking to how social media and emerging technologies are intersecting with health education, promotion and communications. My other to friends joining me will be Alex Rampy of the SocialButterfly blog as well as Qui Diaz of the Evange.list blog – both are talented individuals who love to use social media to bring to light the things that matter.

The awesome Jonny Goldstein has written a post about the event taking place tomorrow evening, check it out here.

What: Jonny’s Par-tay, the live interactive online talk show
Who: Join special guests Andre Blackman, Qui Diaz, and Alexandra Rampy, with host Jonny Goldstein and super producer Scott Stead.
Where: jonnyspartay.com
When: Weds., July 16, Weds, 9-10PM

Hope to see you there!